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Reusing a complex password (especially in multiple places) is almost as bad as using a weak password, but that seems inevitable given all the accounts a person
by rainonmoon 5y ago
Reusing a complex password (especially in multiple places) is almost as bad as using a weak password, but that seems inevitable given all the accounts a person uses these days if they refuse to use a password manager. In other words, do you think you'll have better luck remembering hundreds of three-word phrases? Or will you reuse your phrase everywhere and make yourself vulnerable?
- jjk166 5y agoYes, it is definitely easier to remember hundreds of three word phrases. If you know the lyrics to stairway to heaven, you can remember a little under 1000 unique three word phrases. How many song lyrics, movie quotes, pieces of trivia, names, etc can you recall? The human mind is well optimized for compressing and storing phrases composed of words, as opposed to random alphanumeric sequences.
- kazinator 5y agoRandomly chosen three word combinations are not "phrases" in the linguistic sense, though they certainly are "pass phrases". I think we are sliding into equivocation over multiple meanings of the word "phrase". There is a difficulty there that should be acknowledged.
- kazinator 5y ago> remembering hundreds of three-word phrases For that, I'd strongly recommend simplifying your life to a dependency on fewer than 10 password-protected sites. (Or, for Pete's sake, at least try to keep it to "a few dozen", not "hundreds".) If you have hundreds of passwords, how many of those are critically important? I bet you could partition all those accounts into two groups: fewer than 10 that are important, and the rest. The passwords for the rest group could be heavily reused. Like, you know that password you created on some blog site three years ago (which for some reason didn't support Google or Facebook login) just to write one comment? Who cares about it.